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Untitled Article
or the greater correctness of its point of view , would be able to supply a counterpoise : if we take this also into the account , no small portion of the > blame is already removed from the theologians and the church of Germany : the evil itself remains , but it appears more as connected with the philosophical and literary spirit of the time , than as a charge against the theology , which , however it may have come in contact with , and been affected by , the philosophical endeavours of the age , has yet its own independent history ; nor are the several portions of this so indistinct and confused as would appear from the notes of Mr . Rose ,
And this constitutes the second point which I would notice , namely , that not only in Mr , Rose ' s citations , but in the sketch given in the discourses themselves , the distinction of the different time 3 and periods has been to so great a degree neglected : an omission which has entirely obscured the several points of transition by which theology progressively advanced towards a purer and sounder state . How can your countrymen form a correct image of our literature , when Lessing and Schellin ^ , Steinbart and
Bretschneider , Tollner and Schleiermacher , Bahrdt and Wegscheider , Herder and the anonymous author of the Vindicise sacrae N . T . scriptur ., are mentioned together , without any other distinction than the often incorrect dates ? Most of these authors who are thus named together , were separated by thirty or forty years from each other ; they may to the letter say the same thing , and yet the meaning in which they say it , and the influence which it has upon the times , are by no means the same ; the earlier have , perhaps ,
suggested as an experiment what has long since been discarded ; or they have started that as philosophers , which only the more superficial writers have attempted to convert into theology : several of them moreover had grown up in close connexion with a period in which it was a duty to contend against a false orthodoxism which clung to the letter alone : while many of the
weaker moderns have proceeded to develope their opinions into positions , against which those nobler strugglers for truth would themselves with great earnestness have contended . The neglect of these historical relations , however , ( which is not made good by the description of Semler , ) casts a false light upon the whole view . Had our author possessed a vivid conception of the spirit of German theology , which toward the middle of the preceding :
century was more ri g idly attached , than was ever the case in England , to a false system of doctrine , combined with a confined idea of inspiration , and a stiff , intolerant method of demonstration , which impeded the healthy process of a scriptural and deeper theology ; had he moreover by the study of the noblest authors of our nation in that earlier period , whether in philosophy , or in practical or elegant literature , learnt the inward desire after a noble , genuine freedom of mind , for which at that time Protestant and Romanist
longed , he would deem the rise of a new and partly daring direction of theology , not only a natural but an interesting phenomenon ; he would have acknowledged that in part the legitimate requisitions of science , in philology and history , led to the adoption of that new course ; that many also of those so-called innovators , were well conscious that they possessed a Christian and
good scriptural foundation and object , but that almost all were so deficient in . firm , scientific principles in the execution of these views , that too much freedom and too open a course was given to the bad , the capricious , and the irreligious , to violate the sanctuaries of the Bible , by a semi-philosophical babbling and a lawless criticism . If then this point of view be adhered to , that all German innovations in theology discharged themselves principally in two main channels ; the one
Untitled Article
526 Professor Sack ' s View of Religion in Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1828, page 526, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2563/page/14/
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